Upcoming VMS Comparison Research / Testing

John Honovich

I want us to do some fundamental research to better understand how specific VMS features work. I am throwing this out to gather feedback from members on what they think and what they would like to see.

Here's a few examples:

Video export - What's the process of video exporting? What options are available? How is video played back once exported?

Camera discovery / addition - How does camera discovery work? What options does it provide? How about manual addition?

Digital zoom - How do you enable digital zoom? How do you digitally zoom, pan and tilt? How do you return to the 'full' view?

I imagine there being a few dozen of these, including how do I review an alert, how do I search for video at a specific time, how do I create a view, etc.

My rationale is that I want a clear understanding of tradeoffs - are there major variances? is someone doing something really wrong? is someone missing something fundamental? etc.

VMSes to Use

The plan is to use 5 VMSes (in alphabetical order):

Avigilon

Exacq

Genetec

Milestone

OnSSI

We'd like to use VMSes that are broadly used so that readers can maximize value from looking at their own (or likely alternatives). On the other hand, the VMS market is deeply fragmented and there are numerous other VMSes that are widely used.

We certainly plan to test other VMSes in the future and, when we do so, we can compare them to this initial group test as a baseline (e.g., Seetec's camera discovery is better/worse/different than those 5).

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Harris Bond

I think the list is very good since those are the market leaders. If there was space for another one then I would love to see an indepth review of Axxon, their 16 channel free version but also the enterprise version.

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Harris Bond

what about some one box budget NVR reviews for us that do small projects? I understand that not many exist that support third party cameras (other than the ones from NAS companies like QNAP, e.t.c) but even the ones from huge companies like Hikvision, Dahia, e.t.c would be interesting - at least for me :)

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Undisclosed End User #1

I think the biggest question is who are you testing for - installers or end users? Obviously, there will be a huge difference in what questions to ask and features to compare. Take your examples - Digital Zoom would be a feature that would definitely be of interest to end users, while Video Export could apply to both installers and end users (installers would need to set up the export and possibly provide storage). On the other hand, Camera Discovery, while it may apply to sophisticated end users, is more an installer concern.

The Phase 1 evaluations I wrote for Avigilon, Dallmeier and Endura, and posted here (and three others I can't release yet) were based primarily on end user needs, with a few management questions thrown in. Phase 2 evaluations, except for Dallmeier's, go much deeper into both end user operations and technical detail from a management, upgrade and installation perspective.

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Undisclosed Integrator #2

How about throwing in another VMS other than both Milestone & ONSSI? Doesn't Milestone still write the backend for both & ONSSI just the front end (Occularis)? Or have I been away from these for too long and now ONSSI actually writes their own recording engine as well?

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Carl Lindgren

How are camera salvos handled: How many pre-made salvos? Can the salvos intermingle 16:9 and 4:3 cameras? Can custom salvos be easily programmed? How flexible are the salvos? Can cameras be played back in synch? Can some cameras be synched while others are not?

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Matt Ion

The things I'm curious about are "tips and tricks" that most software incorporate that people don't usually know about, either because they're not obvious, or because people just don't take the time.

I think of a few that Vigil has that I'll sometimes show to the more savvy users when I'm training them, such as

Smart Search - mask areas within a playback image and have the system re-search for motion in those areas

Markers - select a sub-section of a playback timeline, then "zoom" on that area for finer scrub control, and for exporting just that section rather than the entire timeline

Exporting multiple cameras at once

None of these are hidden, but they're also not in-your-face, so unless they have time to sit and play, users don't generally find them... invariably though, users that I do show them to love them.

Also, things like "recommended" operations - again using Vigil as an example: when exporting video, one can select multiple destinations (local disk, DVD-R, flash drive, etc.), and the "Exports" folder on the local drive is generally selected by default. I always tell users to leave that checked, even if they're exporting to optical, because then you keep a copy of it on the machine.

Vigil also has the option to export to generic AVI as well as its own "Authentic Video" (proprietary MJPEG codec) - I always *reinforce* that they should export as Authentic, as it embeds all sorts of critical metadata as well as authenticity checking, which could be critical if it's to be used as evidenced. I've had several occasions where users have exported as AVI and then ask where the time display is (answer: it's not there in AVI). I'm sure most DVRs/NVRs have similar options; it would be good to see that included.

Anyway, don't know if those kinds of things fall within the scope of your tests - things like Smart Search and Markers in particular, are features I use regularly and if I was looking at other VMSes, I'd want to know if they had something similar. It would be nice to know about other such "neat" features that are in other systems.

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Carl Lindgren

Another one: Keyboard shortcuts. Can key combinations be used to control functions like playback direction and speed; initiate clip creation; create bookmarks, etc?

By the way, what happened to the "bullets" feature when posting here? I used bullets in my post and I believe Matt did too. Do "bullets require Java or Flash? Bullets appear everywhere except on my office computer. Oh well....

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